The Nine Tailors - Dorothy Leigh Sayers - Google Books Dorothy Leigh Sayers 3 Reviews The Nine Tailors is Dorothy L. Sayers's finest mystery, featuring Lord Peter Whimsey, and a classic of the genre. � The nine tellerstrokes from the belfry of an ancient country church toll out the death of an unknown man and call the famous Lord Peter Whimsey to investigate the good and evil that lurks in every person. Steeped in the atmosphere of a quiet parish in the strange, flat fen-country of East Anglia, this is a tale of suspense, character, and mood by an author critics and readers rate as one of the great masters of the mystery novel. What people are saying - Write a review As Always.... User Review - milesjay213 - Overstock.com The product arrived from Overstock on time. It was well packaged for shipping and arrived in the same condition it would have been in had I slid it off a shelf in a bookstore. Im always impressed with my interactions with this site! Read full review This is one of the best mysteries I have ever read.

Selected pages A Full Peal of Grandsire Triples 67 lord peter is called into 97 lord peter is taken from lead 128 tailor paul is called before 183 lord peter is called wrong 281 A Short Touch of Stedmans Triples 299 the waters are called out 367 the waters are called home 377 the bells are rung down 393 View all » Common terms and phrases All Book Search results &raquo; About the author (1934) Dorothy Sayers's impressive reputation as a contemporary master of the classic detective story is eclipsed only by Agatha Christie's. Sayers was born in Oxford and attended Somerville College, where she received a B.A. in 1915 and an M.A. in 1920. During that period, Sayers worked as an instructor of modern languages at Hull High School for Girls in Yorkshire and as a reader for a publisher in Oxford. Her early literary work was in poetry; she published several volumes and served as an editor for the journal Oxford Poetry from 1917 to 1919.

Sayers also worked as a copywriter for a major advertising firm in London. She was president of the Modern Language Association from 1939 to 1945 and of the Detection Club in the 1950s. Around 1920 Sayers developed the idea for her detective hero Lord Peter Wimsey, and she soon published her first mystery, Whose Body? (1923), in which Lord Peter is introduced. For the next dozen or so years, Sayers wrote prolifically about Wimsey, creating in the process what many critics of the genre consider to be the finest detective novels in the English language. Perhaps her most famous Wimsey mystery was The Nine Tailors (1934). Although Sayers essentially followed the classic form in her detective fiction---a formula in which the plot assumes a greater importance than do the characters---Sayers maintained that a detective hero's greatness depended on how effectively the character was portrayed. All but one of Sayers's mysteries feature Lord Peter Wimsey. By the late 1930s, Sayers had apparently tired of writing detective fiction.

She stated in 1947 that she would write no more mysteries, that she wrote detective fiction only when she was young and in need of money. Thus saying, Sayers turned her attention to her early loves, medieval and religious literature, spending her remaining years lecturing on and translating Dante (see Vol. 2). The Nine Tailors (The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries Book 11) - Kindle edition by Dorothy L. Sayers. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. HALL OF FAME TOP 100 REVIEWER on June 30, 2006 Format: Paperback Set in the remote village of Fenchurch St. Paul, this 1934 mystery involves an unknown body, which has been disfigured and mysteriously buried in the same grave as a local woman, shortly after the New Year. Many years before, a magnificent necklace of emeralds was stolen here, though it was never found. Two men and a local woman were implicated in the theft, and both men served time in prison.

Now the unknown body, the fate of the two men involved in the theft of the emeralds, the whereabouts of the necklace, and the involvement of seemingly upright citizens of Fenchurch St. Paul are all under investigation. Lord Peter Wimsey, accompanied by his "man" Bunter, becomes involved in the investigation when their car runs off the road on a snowy New Year's Eve. Lord Peter ultimately agrees to substitute for an indisposed bell-ringer when the rector attempts to set a record of more than 18,000 rings in nine hours as a New Year's Eve celebration. The bells are an integral part of the mystery, with the "nine tailors," a pattern of bell ringing, figuring prominently in the action. A coded letter suggests that the bells themselves may be connected to the emerald necklace. Author Dorothy Sayers creates vivid characters--the somewhat arrogant Lord Peter Wimsey, his faithful manservant Bunter, the "forgetful" rector of the local church and his wife, the French wife and children of one of the thieves, assorted odd characters from the town, and local law enforcement.

The opportunity to locate the emeralds and ascertain the fate of the thieves, one of whom escaped shortly after being sentenced to jail, intrigues Lord Peter, and some townspeople have much to gain (or lose), depending on the identity of the man in the grave and his possible killer. Read more › The Nine Tailors : Dorothy L. Sayers : 9780450001000 Dorothy L. Sayers Crime About Dorothy L. Sayers Dorothy L Sayers was born in Oxford in 1893, and was both a classical scholar and a graduate in modern languages. As well as her popular Lord Peter Wimsey series, she wrote several religious plays, but considered her translations of Dante's Divina Commedia to be her best work. She died in 1957. show more Review Text Missing emeralds, unexpected corpses, a cryptogran, erudition, a touch of the macabre, an old church with ringing bells, and Peter Wimsy performing feats of deduction and exercising his freakish humor. A fine bit of writing, a good story, and at the same time a rattling good mystery. Dorothy Sayers at her best.

(Kirkus Reviews) show more Review quote She brought to the detective novel originality, intelligence, energy and wit. -- P.D. James Dorothy L Sayers is one of the best detective story writers. -- E. C. Bentley Daily Telegraph I admire her novels ... she has great fertility of invention, ingenuity and a wonderful eye for detail. -- Ruth Rendell A truly great storyteller. -- Minette Walters show more Customer reviews This, the ninth of Sayers's eleven full length Wimsey novels, is the one that lifts her above the category of twentieth-century female detective novelist, and places her among the literary greats. It is a thoroughly satisfying mystery - sophisticated, complex, intellectually challenging. Everything in the plot is there for a reason; and the final explanation is ingenious and unexpected. It is Sayers, so there is more than just a plot. The characters have a depth and realism far beyond the caricatures of Agatha Christie. They have individuality and weaknesses and baggage and unexpected strength in the face of adversity. They are, in short, people. Wimsey himself appears more relaxed in this than in most of the other books. A far cry from the self-conscious man-about-town of Whose Body?

or the nervy war veteran of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, this is the Wimsey hinted at in Five Red Herrings, the Wimsey who will set out his personal credo in Gaudy Night: the born and bred countryman, at ease with himself, almost classless at times, an incomer who at once instinctively understands and is accepted by this tiny community. The community itself is minutely and deftly drawn too - partly through its supporting characters, partly through Sayers's own narrative voice, stronger and more distinctive in this book than in the others, and often taking on the cadence and the overtones of a local character to remarkable effect. And then there are the most powerful and enduring characters of all: the bells of Fenchurch St Paul and the place itself. 'The Nine Tailors' is to the Fens what 'The Return of the Native' is to the heathlands of Dorset. It is a work of art, a tone-poem, a sonorous evocation of place and time, a symphony of words and images that endure in the mind long after the last page is turned.

(For more on the power of language in 'The Nine Tailors', I refer you to my recent essay on The Art of Reading at Much attention is given in literary circles to the 'great American novel'; little, if any, is given to the novel that depicts England. Yet 'The Nine Tailors', for all that it is set in an obscure and bleak corner of the countryside, is as intimate and accurate a portrait of inter-war Englishness as anything ever written - and an enduring one at that. ~~~ One must then turn, with the utmost reluctance and distaste, to the current sub-standard paperback edition of this masterpiece (978-0-450-00100-0). It appears to have been typeset and proof-read by persons with little knowledge of, and less interest in, either the English language or the basic rules of punctuation. It is further encumbered with an arch and self-congratulatory introduction by Elizabeth George, which adds little to one's appreciation of the work, and which - to add insult to injury - is inserted between Sayers's own foreword and the first chapter, thus breaking the rhythm of the author's original text.

(No doubt the same vandalism has been committed in the latest impression of Gaudy Night, where any interruption between the Foreword and Chapter 1 would be even more obtrusive. Fortunately I still have my 1988 paperback of that work.) A minor point, but a further niggle in light of these graver shortcomings, is the faintly 1970s typography employed for the section headings. In summary, this edition gives the unfortunate impression of having been brought to press by an editor who neither recognised nor valued the calibre and significance of the book. I have now placed my 2011 paperback in the recycling bin and ordered a second-hand hardback. On the grounds of the punctuation errors alone, I would urge anyone who wishes to read what Miss Sayers actually wrote, to eschew the current paperback edition in favour of any other second-hand copy available. show more by B Bennetts The Nine Tailors The Nine Tailors The Nine Tailors is a 1934 mystery novel by British writer Dorothy L. Sayers, her ninth featuring sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. Plot introduction Edit Block For this novel, set in the Fens, Sayers had to learn about change ringing.

In it, Lord Peter rings one of eight church bells in a record-setting series of sound patterns called "changes", and later uses his knowledge of bell-ringing to solve a 20-year-old mystery involving a stolen emerald necklace. Explanation of the novel's title The title refers to the ringing of a church bell to signal a death in the parish. There is a ring of eight bells at the local church, each with its own name and history. The largest, the tenor bell, is Tailor Paul, the great bell on which are rung nine "tailor" or "teller" strokes at the death of a man in the parish, six for a woman and three for a child. One stroke then follows at intervals of 30 seconds for every year of the deceased's life. Plot summary Edit Block Bell ringing practice in Stoke Gabriel parish church, south Devon - similar to what Wimsey takes part in during the book Stranded in the Fenland village of Fenchurch St. Paul on New Year's Eve after a car accident, Wimsey helps ring a nine-hour peal of bells overnight after Will Thoday, one of the ringers, is stricken by influenza.

Lady Thorpe, wife of Sir Henry Thorpe, the local squire, dies next morning and Wimsey hears how the Thorpe family has been blighted for 20 years by the unsolved theft of jewels from a house-guest by the butler, Deacon, and an accomplice, Cranton. Both men were imprisoned, but the jewels were never recovered. At Easter, Sir Henry himself dies and his wife's grave is opened for his burial. A body is found hidden in the grave, mutilated beyond recognition. It is first thought to be the body of a tramp labourer calling himself "Driver" who arrived and then vanished just after the New Year. An odd document which was found in the bell chamber by Hilary Thorpe, Sir Henry's daughter, proves to be a cipher. Acting on a hunch, Lord Peter enquires at the Post Office for any uncollected letters addressed to "Driver". Bunter inveigles a postmistress into handing over a letter posted in France, which confirms a link with the body, which was wearing French underclothes.

The letter is addressed not to "Driver" but to "Paul Taylor", a reference to "Tailor Paul", the tenor (largest) bell in the ring at Fenchurch St. Paul. When the writer of the letter is traced, the dead man is assumed to be Arthur Cobbleigh, a British soldier listed as missing in action but who evidently deserted and stayed in France after the war. Cobbleigh appears to have known where the emeralds were hidden, and to have plotted to recover them, probably with "Driver". "Driver" is discovered to be an alias of Cranton, the accomplice in the original theft. Wimsey assumes the two men did recover the emeralds and Cranton then killed Cobbleigh for them, but cannot prove it. However, when he decodes the cipher (which requires knowledge of change-ringing) it leads him to the emeralds, still untouched in their hiding place in the church. Without any particular purpose, Wimsey shows the cipher to Mary Thoday, Will's wife and Deacon's widow. The Thodays abscond to London. Wimsey guesses the true identity of Cobbleigh, and confirms this through the Sûreté in France.

He also discovers the Thodays' whereabouts through the Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranton is interviewed by Wimsey and his brother in law, Detective Inspector Charles Parker. Much becomes clear when Cobbleigh turns out to have been Deacon, the thieving butler. In 1918 he murdered a warder and escaped from prison. A body, apparently his, was later found, but in fact Deacon had murdered a soldier and swapped identities with him. He married bigamously in France and waited several years to return for the emeralds, which he had hidden before his arrest. Since he risked hanging if caught, he finally asked Cranton to help, sending him the cipher as a clue to the hiding place as a token of good faith. Cranton could not solve it but knew it related to the bells, so he came to Fenchurch as "Driver" on New Year's Day. He went to the bell-chamber on the night of 4 January, but found Deacon's dead, bound body in the chamber and fled, dropping the cipher. Parker then places a hidden microphone in the interview room where Will Thoday and his sailor brother Jim are waiting.

It becomes apparent that both brothers thought that the other was guilty of killing Deacon, but were willing to take the blame themselves or at least shield the other. When they are interviewed, Will relates that he encountered Deacon, who had come to retrieve the emeralds, in the church on 30 December. Will had married Mary after the war, believing her a widow. Now he realised Deacon was still alive, making his and Mary's marriage bigamous and their daughters illegitimate. Desperate to prevent Deacon exposing his family to pain and scandal, Will tied him up in the bell-chamber, planning to bribe him to leave, but became helpless with Spanish influenza next day (which is why Wimsey rang Will's bell in the New Year peal). Will's delirious talk led Jim to find Deacon's body in the bell-chamber on 2 January. He assumed that Will had murdered him. Appalled but loyal, he waited until the night after Lady Thorpe's funeral on 4 January, made the body unrecognisable and hid it in the new grave, then left for sea. When the body was discovered, Will assumed Jim had killed Deacon. Neither can explain how Deacon died. Both are released.

Will marries Mary (who had recognised the cipher as being in Deacon's handwriting) again in Bloomsbury under Archbishop's licence, and returns to Fenchurch St. Paul. The mystery is almost over; Deacon's death alone remains inexplicable. It is only when Wimsey returns to Fenchurch the following Christmas that he understands. Floods inundate the countryside, and Wimsey climbs the tower as the bells are ringing the alarm. The appalling noise in the bell-chamber convinces him that Deacon, tied there for hours between New Year's Eve and New Year's Day while Wimsey helped with the all-night peal, could not have survived. Deacon was killed by the ringers - or by the bells themselves. Will Thoday is drowned in the flood trying to save another man who has fallen from a failing sluice-gate. Wimsey speculates that Will may not have wanted to live, having guessed his part in killing Deacon.

Characters in "The Nine Tailors" The Reverend Theodore Venables, rector of Fenchurch St Paul Sir Henry Thorpe, the local squire; his wife Lady Thorpe; their only daughter Hilary Superintendent Blundell, a policeman Jeff Deacon, once the Thorpes’ butler, convicted of a robbery in their house 20 years previously. Nobby Cranton, a London jewel-thief and Deacon’s accomplice Will Thoday, a farmer and bellringer Mary Thoday, his wife, originally married to Deacon Jim Thoday, Will’s brother, a merchant seaman Awards and nominations British Crime Writers Association - 1999 Rusty Dagger award for best crime novel of the 1930s. Literary significance and criticism Edit Block "For many reasons, no great favourite ... despite Dorothy's swotting up of bell-ringing and the two good maps. The cause of death, however, is original, and the rescue scene in the church amid the flood shows the hand of the master. It should be added that this work is a favorite with many readers. Sinclair Lewis judged it the best of his four "indispensables" ...". "Dorothy L.

Sayers incautiously entered the closed world of bell-ringing in The Nine Tailors on the strength of a sixpenny pamphlet picked up by chance -- and invented a method of killing which would not produce death, as well as breaking a fundamental rule of that esoteric art by allowing a relief ringer to take part in her famous nine-hour champion peal." In his infamous essay attacking detective fiction, Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd, American critic Edmund Wilson decried this novel as dull, overlong and far too detailed; describing how he skipped a lot of the prose about bell-ringing (quote: "a lot of information of the kind that you might expect to find in an encyclopaedia article on campanology"), and also large amounts of Sayers’ focal sleuth character, "the embarrassingly named" Lord Peter Wimsey. Autobiographical elements Edit Block As a child and young teenager, Sayers lived on the southern edge of the Fens at Bluntisham-cum-Earith, where her father was Rector.

Hilary Thorpe, the resourceful and independent-minded 15-year old daughter of Sir Henry Thorpe - who bravely faces the loss of both parents during the book, and who provided vital help to Wimsey in solving the mystery - is mentioned as intending to study at Oxford and become a writer, just as the author did. Film, TV or theatrical adaptations Edit Block The Nine Tailors was adapted for television as a four-part series in 1973, one of several adaptations of "Lord Peter Wimsey" novels starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter. In a significant plot difference, the original theft of the emeralds is introduced by showing a young Lieutenant Wimsey of the Rifle Brigade attending Henry Thorpe's wedding shortly before the War and unsuccessfully pursuing the fleeing Cranton. (In the books, Wimsey did not join the Army until after the outbreak of the War.) Deacon's escape from prison and the murder of the soldier Arthur Cobbleigh (renamed to Watkins) are also shown in the first episode.

Other parts were played by: Glyn Houston - Bunter MathFiction: The Nine Tailors (Dorothy Leigh Sayers) Dorothy Leigh Sayers (click on names to see more mathematical fiction by the same author) ... Contributed by "William E. Emba" This Lord Peter Wimsey novel is often considered Sayers' best. The plot revolves around the art of change ringing, often called "campanology" by non-campanologists. As usual with Sayers, she makes no explanatory concessions to her less-than-completely-educated readers (in this case, mostly Americans), so see [BROKEN LINK -- See note below from Peter Adams] for general information about change ringing, including a glossary. Change ringing has an inherent mathematical content. Because of physical limitations and safety precautions, one can only move up or down one bell when ringing, and the art is thus focussed on generating permutations from these interchanges. (Playing tunes is simply not done.) Sayers refers several times to this mathematical content, including having one character who has written a book on the mathematics of change ringing, and an encryption algorithm based on change ringing permutations.

In addition, most mathematically-minded readers will identity the killer long before Lord Peter figures things out, just by metafictional reasoning. This is deliberate with Sayers, who often scorned the traditional whodunit thrills in favor of writing for the sake of writing. American readers should know that the title comes from an English saying "Nine tailors make a man". Its meaning and origin is unknown, but it is usually explained as being based on the traditional nine bells, that is, the nine tollers, rung at a man's death. Contributed by Dennis P. Geller Many people would not consider Nine Tailors to be the best Wimsey nover. (Everyone I know prefers Gaudy Night -- with, perhaps, Have His Carcase's image of Harriet vane in a claret colored dress a close second. Contributed by David E. Siegel If this gets in, the fully worked out decryption problem (although on more or less the cross-word level) in Have His Carcase should probably be included as well. Contributed by Peter M.

Adams I am fascinated by your "Mathematical Fiction" web site, which I found by following links concerning change ringing and the book "The Nine Tailors". Unfortunately there is a link that doesn't work [on this page]. It says "see for general information about change ringing, including a glossary" but this gives a "404" error. Various web pages have the same link but sadly the site itself seems to have vanished. There is some (rather unhelpful) information on the site at - at least, there was today (13 February 2010). This web site looks interesting, but doesn't mention the "lost" site, Thought you might like to know - keep up the good work! (Note: This is just one work of mathematical fiction from the list. To see the entire list or to see more works of mathematical fiction, return to the Homepage .) Works Similar to The Nine Tailors According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one: Dorothy L. Sayers - by Michael E. Grost Dorothy L.

Sayers The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928) (Chapters 1 - 12) Murder Must Advertise (1933) Lord Peter Views the Body (c1928) The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager's Will (1925) The Entertaining Episode of The Article in Question (1925) The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head (1926) The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba (1928) Lord Peter The Man Who Knew How (1932) In the Teeth of the Evidence (collected 1939) A Shot at Goal The Inspiration of Mr. Budd (1926) The Leopard Lady (circa 1928) Scrawns The Cyprian Cat (by 1933) Dilemma (1934) An Arrow O'er the House (1934) Blood Sacrifice (1936) Dorothy L. Sayers Many people today link Dorothy L. Sayers with Agatha Christie .

However, aside from the fact that they were both British women who published mystery stories during the 1920's and 1930's, their works could not possibly have less in common. Instead, Sayers' fiction seems to me to have ties with the realist school of R. Austin Freeman, E.C. Bentley, and Freeman Wills Crofts; these ties are more fully discussed in that article, which is designed as a companion piece to the present one. Montague Egg stories and Other Puzzle Plots Dorothy L. Sayers' short stories about sleuth Montague Egg are some of her best works. They are the Sayers stories that most consistently have puzzle plots, and good ones too. There is some fashion among Lord Peter Wimsey fans to denigrate these stories, because Lord Peter does not appear in them. That is carrying Wimseyolatry too far. I am not a member of the Wimsey cult. I think Wimsey is a perfectly good detective, one who does a good job of solving the mysteries in which he appears. He is likable and pleasant.

But I hardly think, as do some readers, that Wimsey is the ideal man, the ultimate lover, or the chief appeal of Sayers' detective stories! People have a right to these views, but I cannot share them at all. Sayers wrote eleven Montague Egg stories; they are the first six tales listed under Hangman's Holiday, and the first five under In the Teeth of the Evidence. These tales are among the best pure detective stories that Sayers wrote. Most of the tales reflect realist school paradigms of detective fiction. Several of the best of these tales center around clocks and alibis. The stories seem to come in series: There are two poisoned liquor stories, "The Poisoned Dow '08" and "Bitter Almonds" (1939). Two tales are set in public rooms in British pubs, solved in part by discussion among the guests, "Sleuths on the Scent" and "A Shot at Goal". These stories involve identifying people through clues to their professions. Similar mystery ideas are at the core of "The Professor's Manuscript" (1939).

Two tales involve time and alibis at country inns, "Dirt Cheap" (1936) and "False Weight". A third "Murder in the Morning" is related in alibi technique, although it has a setting involving road travel. The most complex stories are "One Too Many" and "Murder at Pentecost". They show the "breakdown of identity" approach common in the realist school (and discussed in detail on the article on realist fiction). In general, many of Sayers' best plots are found among her shorter fiction. They tend to have real puzzle plots, in the sense of a initial, well defined mysterious situation that ultimately reaches a clever solution. The other most important puzzle plots in Sayers are found in three later Lord Peter Wimsey tales, "The Queen's Square" (1932), "Absolutely Elsewhere" (1933), and "The Haunted Policeman" (1938). The three stories remind one of Christie, Crofts' The Cask, and Freeman's "Phyllis Annesley's Peril", respectively.

"The Queen's Square" employs that Christie staple, the costume party, although Sayers explicitly eschews Christie's trademark, the Harlequin costume, noting on the opening page of her tale that no one is dressed as Pierrot or Columbine. The similarity to Christie is a one time affair, while the influence of Freeman and Crofts is a constant in Sayers' work. Sayers' interest in technical gimmicks also extends to stories about the ingenious hiding of objects. There is the concealment of the will in "The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager's Will" (1925), the pearls in "The Necklace of Pearls", the gun in her contribution to Ask a Policeman (1933), and the hidden gems in The Nine Tailors (1934). The Early Fiction in the Freeman tradition Sayers' first novel Whose Body? (1923), has an excellent mystery plot too, as well as a delightful vein of humor. But most of Sayers' novels are not puzzle plot oriented. Sayers seemed to associate short fiction with puzzle plots, and long fiction with novelistic elements, both thriller fiction and literary material. Even Whose Body?

is fairly short, compared to Sayers' other books. One recent hardback reprint is just 100 pages, and perhaps it should be regarded as a novella, not a novel. Whose Body? recalls the work of both E.C. Bentley and R. Austin Freeman . Whose Body? has two main lines of investigation; each seems modeled on an inquiry in Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913), a novel Sayers loved. One line of investigation in Whose Body? looks at the mysterious corpse of an unknown man; Wimsey studies the corpse's grooming for clues, the way the detective similarly studies the corpse in Bentley. The other main inquiry follows the last hours of the missing Levy, and the trail he left behind him in his home. This is modeled on a similar trail of final activities left by the murdered man in Bentley's novel. In Trent's Last Case, these two inquiries focus on the same murder victim, while in Sayers' Whose Body?, these investigations look at tow different people, the anonymous corpse of the title, and the missing Levy. Sayers comes up with puzzle plot solutions to the two investigations that bear a family resemblance to those in Bentley's novel.

However, she ties these two plots up with a "disposal of the corpse" plot, that has no analogue in Bentley's book. Like many of Freeman's stories, Whose Body? centers on the question of disposing of a body. As in Freeman, there is a "breakdown of identity", with the identity of the various corpses undergoing confusion. Considerable ingenuity is shown in these aspects by Sayers. We also have detailed physical investigations of two crime scenes, which lead early on in the book to surprising revelations. Such investigations recalls Freeman, and also the Mr. Fortune stories of H.C. Bailey , another Freeman-influenced author also investigated all the details of corpses to reconstruct the crime. The story of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928) breaks into two halves, with each half functioning as a more or less independent novella. The first and better half, consisting of Chapters 1 - 12 and the start of the succeeding chapter, contains a real puzzle plot. The first half is also rich in genuine detection. In fact, nearly 100% of this section consists of following Wimsey on his detective efforts.

Wimsey's detective work shows the influence of Sayers' ancestors in the realist school. Like R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke, Wimsey collects physical clues, such as dust and stains. His valet Bunter does much photography, just like Thorndyke's assistant Polton. There is also some sophisticated medical evidence, also Freeman like. The medical researcher who collaborates with Wimsey, Sir James Lubbock, is also a Dr. Thorndyke like figure. Sayers compares her story to Freeman's work in Chapter 18, with Wimsey suggesting its plot and subject matter have affinities to Freeman's, and citing Freeman's A Silent Witness (1914) explicitly as an ancestor. And Wimsey resembles E.C. Bentley's Trent in his suave, polite technique in interviewing witnesses. Just as in Bentley, the witnesses tend to be of the working classes, people who are continually monitoring and recording the behavior of the upper class suspects and murder victims.

There are also the Bentley like quotes from poetry: "You're only doing it to annoy..." in Chapter 7 is from Lewis Carroll, while the references to The Song of Roland in Chapter 8 are quite original. They suggest that the Holmes Watson relationship had precursors in classic literature. Sayers will later translate Roland. Sayers uses formal, abstract, non-naturalistic chapter titles in this book, in this case based on Bridge hands. Such a technique will become common in later Golden Age writers, especially Ngaio Marsh . Sayers will use this technique later herself in The Nine Tailors, where the chapter titles will be based on bell ringing. The Early Minor Novels Sayers' poisoning tales include such novels as Strong Poison (1930), and The Documents in the Case (1930), in addition to some of the Montague Egg stories. They tend to have a uniform paradigm, focusing purely and simply on one question: how was the crime done. Sayers usually comes up with some ingenious technical scheme to introduce poison into some receptacle, such as a bottle, that does not appear to have been tampered with.

Sayers' simple if clever poisoning ideas work perfectly well in a ten page Montague Egg short story, but they are unable to support a whole novel very well. Such early Sayers novels as Clouds of Witness (1926), Unnatural Death (1927), Strong Poison (1930), and The Documents in the Case (1930) do not seem very good to me. These novels are painfully minimalist, in their near absence of plot, real detection, or any sort of substance. They lack the puzzle plots of Sayers' shorter works, and the literary quality and fascinating "background" material of such later Sayers novels as Murder Must Advertise (1933) and The Nine Tailors (1934). One problem with the last three of these books, Unnatural Death, Strong Poison, and The Documents in the Case: Sayers deliberately wrote them so that the identity of the killer would be obvious early on. She asserted that it was much more interesting to try to figure out how the crime was committed, than who done it. I am much less enthused about the character of Miss Climpson than are many critics.

While the Sherlock Holmes era was full of genuine female detectives, such as C.L. Pirkis' Loveday Brooke and Anna Katherine Green's archetypal spinster sleuth, Amelia Butterworth, Miss Climpson is not really a detective, merely a gossip. She is a step backward for women, not a step forward. Adventure in Sayers Sayers apparently began writing detective stories with an attempt to write a Sexton Blake thriller. There is a strong strand of adventure fiction plotting running through many of her works, that seems in contrast to the puzzle plots that dominated British Golden Age fiction. This is most notable in such early short story gems as "The Inspiration of Mr. Budd" (1926), "The Dragon's Head" (1926), and "The Cave of Ali Baba" (1928). In fact, most of the stories in Sayers' first omnibus, Lord Peter Views the Body (collected 1928), are basically adventure oriented. "The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste" from that volume combines adventure with puzzle plot elements.

There is also a strong current of adventure running through Murder Must Advertise (1933); "A Matter of Taste" contains plot aspects that anticipate that novel. Sayers' adventure tales like to show her hero Wimsey going undercover in dangerous situations and new identities. They often involve manhunts for dangerous criminals. Suspense and Thrillers Sayers wrote a large quantity of excellent suspense short stories, most of which were collected in In the Teeth of the Evidence (1939). Sayers' biographer Barbara Reynolds dates the remarkable thriller "The Leopard Lady" to the early Sayers period, circa 1928, and says that it was part of a planned series, with at least one other unpublished tale actually written about the same villains. One wonders if such undated thriller gems as "Scrawns" and "The Cyprian Cat" are also from this era. Pastiches Sayers and Lord Peter Wimsey were spoofed twice by her contemporaries. E.C. Bentley's parody, "Greedy Night" (1938), is today rather better known, being included in the Wimsey omnibus, Lord Peter.

Its initial section, dealing with Wimsey's preparations to attend a rare book auction, is hilarious, but then it tapers off into mediocrity. This section is cleverest in its look at Sayers' interest in The Song of Roland. Anthony Berkeley contributed a long chapter to the Detection Club round robin, Ask a Policeman (1933), as did Sayers herself. Each wrote about the other's sleuth, Berkeley on Peter Wimsey, Sayers on Berkeley's Roger Sheringham. Berkeley's dialogue is hilarious throughout. It especially focuses on all the literary quotations in Sayers' work. In Berkeley's satire, these numerous quotations have little relevance to the plot, but are dragged in kicking and screaming, then modified to serve as commentaries on the story line. Berkeley captures the conversational style not just of Wimsey, but of Bunter, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, Miss Climpson, and other Sayers regulars. By contrast, Sayers clearly enjoyed taking over Berkeley's sleuth Roger Sheringham, and writing a serious pastiche of his work.

One gets the impression she would have liked to take over all of her colleagues' characters, and have a go at putting them through their paces. There is some satire: a view of Sheringham through servants' eyes, and a portrait of how easily Sheringham slips into opportunistic lying, when it will gain him information. But mainly, this is a "real" Sheringham tale. She has him solve the case twice, with two different suspects, presumably in tribute to Berkeley's multiple solutioned The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929), which she mentions in the text. She keeps up the flow of inner monologue in Sheringham's mind, just as in Berkeley, showing his mental processes as he solves the case. This mental flow largely comes in the middle of Sayers' story, and is the highlight of her tale. It is full of the ingenious phrasing found in Berkeley, but richly done here with Sayers' full gifts for literary style. Just as in Berkeley, the flow depicts a logical analysis of the world of the story: how Sheringham relates to the characters, how he sees the elements of the case, how he sees detectival technique.

Much of Sayers' characterization in general comes about through linguistic means. Each person in her stories has their own unique way of talking. In addition to linguistic mannerisms, tone is very important. Through tone, the characters convey an attitude to subject matter they discuss, whether enthusiasm, cynicism or casual acceptance. "The Fantastic Horror of the Cat in the Bag" seems to be an attempt to write a story in the same genre as Crofts' The Cask (1920). Just like the cask in The Cask, here there is a sinister discovery made about the contents of a bag; and the peregrinations of the bag are followed with plotting ingenuity, just like the cask in Crofts' novel. Sayers' story develops a very odd structure. It keeps moving off into left field, with a new set of plot twists. It is certainly not "fair play": no one could deduce coming events in the tale on the basis of initial clues. The opening of Sayers' Busman's Honeymoon (1937) describes the marriage of middle class Harriet to the wealthy Lord Peter Wimsey. They go live on a farm that Harriet knew while growing up called Talboys.

Talboys is also the name of the murder victim in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Sensation novel, Lady Audley's Secret (1861 - 1862), and it is hard not to see the name as a joke of Sayers'. Sayers was an authority on the Sensation Novel, writing a study of Wilkie Collins . Braddon's novel also opens with the poor Lucy Graham marrying the rich Lord Audley, starting a sinister chain of events leading up to murder, and contains a description of the new couple's estate, a description almost as elaborate as Sayers'. Harriet Vane was the heroine of Sayers' book, and one based on Sayers herself. But the analogy to Lady Audley puts her in the same position as one of the most famous villainesses in mystery history. Sayers probably relished this as a macabre joke on herself and her heroine. Backgrounds The realist school favored the use of "backgrounds", in-depth looks at some social institution or society, interwoven into the mystery plot.

Three of Sayers' later novels contain such backgrounds: Murder Must Advertise (1933) looks at the advertising business, The Nine Tailors (1934) at an Anglican church in the Fen country, and Gaudy Night (1935) at an English Woman's College. All three of these backgrounds are autobiographical: Sayers worked for a long time at an ad agency, her father was a vicar at a Fen country church, where she grew up, and she went to school at a Woman's College at Oxford. The Nine Tailors contains its background throughout the entire novel, whereas Murder Must Advertise alternates between chapters set at the advertising agency, and more adventure oriented material involving Wimsey hunting down a drug ring among café society. Sayers' backgrounds tend to look at the life of the mind, such as religion, education, or commercial writing in newspapers or advertising, as well as the social institutions that support that mental life. There are always plenty of people in Sayers' backgrounds, engaged in complex interactions. It is a dual vision: both ideas, and the people who create them. There is also a Background of Scotland running through Five Red Herrings (1931).

It anticipates The Nine Tailors in that it is based in a rural area, and in being a novel in which a map and geography play important roles in the story. Another work that anticipates The Nine Tailors is the novella "The Undignified Melodrama of the Bone of Contention" (published by 1928): much of it takes place in a country church, and it seems to be the first Sayers work involving a map of part of the countryside. However, it is much more into black comedy than the later novel. Its solution also has thematic links to The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928). The best parts of this otherwise rather routine novella deal with an impossible crime, one of Sayers' few excursions into this mystery tradition. This story invokes the Maskelyne shows in its explanations of the crimes; these were real life London stage magic shows of the era, that also inspired the impossible crime stories of John Dickson Carr . Sayers refers to the Maskelyne shows again at the end of "The Haunted Policeman" (1938).

"The Queen's Square" (1932), a timetable and alibi tale, reads like a complete British country house murder mystery in miniature. It is set during a background of a traditional English holiday celebration, and recreates a "Sir Roger de Coverley" dance. The intricate mathematical patterns and folk lorish origin of the Sir Roger anticipate the bell ringing of The Nine Tailors (1934). There is something ecstatic and visionary in the description of the dance. The mathematical nature of the dance is also echoed in the math of the timetables in the tale. Sayers was a writer who saw mathematics as a glimpse of a higher order of being, an ecstatic lifting up of the possibilities of life. One might also note her Montague Egg clock tales, and the safe combinations in "The Cave of Ali Baba" (1928). As in many visionary writers, color plays an important role in this tale. Parts of "The Queen's Square" deal with games coming to life. A similar theme is found in "The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager's Will" (1925), which also shares its color imagery and geometric patterns.

"The Queen's Square" and The Nine Tailors also show Sayers' interest in holiday celebrations; similarly, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club takes place on Armistice Day. Many of Sayers' backgrounds take us to worlds that are at once more abstract and more charged with meaning than everyday life. They tend to take place in idea rich universes, full of symbolic actions. These universes tend to contain complex formal patterns, involving new roles for people, elaborate costumes, mathematical and geometric patterns, and color schemes. Later, one suspects that much of the appeal of Dante to Sayers will be his construction of such an abstract universe. The initial motorbiking race in "The Fantastic Horror of the Cat in the Bag" has very little to do with the mystery plot to come; it seems to be put in the tale for the sheer joy of describing motorcycling, one of Sayers' main hobbies in real life. Like the "Sir Roger" dance, the race involves speed, movement and mathematical patterns. The two stories have structural similarities; they both open with a background description of an exciting event, the race and the dance, and after this is completed a second act of the story begins, and a mystery problem begins to emerge.

The race seems an allegory of life; we see two individuals racing each other, and they are watched enviously by a married man with a side car going much slower. "The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste" shows Sayers' expert knowledge of wine. It is not known exactly when she created her commercial traveler (traveling salesman) in wine and spirits, Montague Egg; one of her letters suggests the early 1930's. Egg is not the only wine detective of the period; H. Warner Allen's William Clerihew ran a wine shop, and appeared in "Tokay of the Comet Year" (1930) and later novels through the 1930's. The 1930's were the peak period for detective stories about wine: Margery Allingham's Death of a Ghost (1934) has a finale centering around spirits, Lawrence G. Blochman published "Red Wine" (1930), Max Brand "Wine on the Desert" (1936), and Ngaio Marsh Vintage Murder (1937). Allingham's "The Widow" is a 1930's short story about wine.

One of the first uses of backgrounds in Sayers was in the Detection Club's round robin novel The Scoop (1931). Sayers wrote the opening and closing sections of The Scoop, setting it at a great newspaper. The portrait of a business and its workers anticipates that of Murder Must Advertise (1933), and seems like a dry run for that later novel. Her picture of a press run, climaxing the first chapter, is a memorable piece of writing, recalling the well known end of Advertise: both pieces describe information being disseminated out to society through mass media. It involves a strange and wonderful pun on a famous quotation from the Book of Job, something utterly and uniquely Sayersian. Periods of Sayers' Writing The influence on Sayers of different realist school authors and traditions was not constant over time. Freeman, and the tradition of scientific and medical detection he represents, was most influential on works published during 1923 - 1930, such as Whose Body? (1923), The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928), Strong Poison (1930), and The Documents in the Case (1930).

The last novel was actually written in collaboration with one of the founders of the scientific school, Dr. Robert Eustace . And Croftsian ideas, such as backgrounds and complex reconstructions of crimes, were most powerful in the books of 1931 - 1935, from Five Red Herrings (1931) though Gaudy Night (1935). The two influences were not strictly confined to these periods; the Croftsian story "The Cat in the Bag" was written by 1928, when Sayers included it in Lord Peter Views the Body; and Sayers would publish a medically based thriller "Blood Sacrifice" (1936) long after most of her Freeman influenced novels. Still, there is a relatively consistent pattern. The novels of the second, Croftsian period tend to be much longer than Sayers' earlier books, as well. The shift in Sayers' writing corresponds, perhaps coincidentally, to a massive change in society: the advent of the Depression.

Sayers' earlier book tended to have settings among the upper classes, even the aristocracy; whereas the later ones tended to be more middle class in orientation, although this switch in focus is already present in such early period books as The Documents in the Case (1930). Sayers' tradesman sleuth, Montague Egg, seems to have been created in this second period as well. Literary Fiction Sayers attempted to bring more "literary" values to detective fiction, and this began to pay off in her later books, especially the impressive The Nine Tailors (1934). This novel does not have a fair play puzzle plot, strictly speaking, but it does have a plot, and a complex, well designed one at that, something that is all to the good. It also includes a well done "background" look at an English country church and its vicar. It is an impressive literary achievement. The Nine Tailors was made into a superb four hour film by the BBC in 1974. This is the best of all the BBC TV adaptations of Sayers' work. The filmmakers have linearized Sayers' chronology, telling the story in sequence, which is probably a requirement for dramatization.

The two central hours, two and three, are probably the richest in the work. The film version rises to its climax at the end of the third hour, with the characters assembled in church and singing the hymn "Holy, Holy, Holy". Sayers devoted much of her last years to a superb translation of Dante. While mystery readers lament the lack of further detective novels, one has to admit that the Dante is a really good book, one that displays Sayers' poetic gifts at their peak. My favorite of the three sections is the Paradise. The Purgatory comes a close second. Barbara Reynolds did a good job completing the work. Sayers' extreme clarity and literalness in translating Dante is also a major asset of her version: Dante's ideas, plot, and characters come over loud and clear. I have used the Paradise as a literary model for much of my writing, ever since I read it at age 23. In a way, this web site is a guided tour of the "Heaven" of the great writers and books of mystery fiction. Opinions on Sayers William L. DeAndrea has pointed out that Sayers' readers tend to go to extremes.

They either think she is a great master, or they dismiss her. I think she was an uneven but sometimes very good writer, with a remarkable variety of skills. She could create good mystery puzzle plots, and sometimes did. She had literary skills, and sometimes used them. She could also create interesting background material. She also had a flair for thriller material, and it pops up in such works as Murder Must Advertise and "The Cave of Ali Baba". One never quite knows what one will get when one starts a Sayers story, and one takes pot luck. Nowadays there is a tendency of some critics to promote her and Agatha Christie as the only two good writers of the Golden Age. This is a grotesque concept, one that involves dismissing Mary Roberts Rinehart , R. Austin Freeman , G.K. Chesterton , S.S. Van Dine , Ellery Queen , and John Dickson Carr , not to mention such gifted one shots as E.C. Bentley , A.A. Milne , and Hake Talbot , and the comic auxiliary of Craig Rice and Stuart Palmer . In any case, instead of narrowing the canon of mystery fiction, scholars should be trying to expand it, reviving the neglected works of outstanding authors.

Another common take on Sayers is that she raised detective fiction to the status of literature. This point of view is especially common in academic studies on Sayers. These writers tend to depict Sayers as the only writer of merit, in a field of detective fiction otherwise consisting of nothing but subliterary junk. Critics of Hammett and Chandler tend to make similar claims for their authors, portraying them as lonely little petunias in the onion patch of detective fiction. There is some truth to this idea, however misguided in its dismissal of detective fiction as a whole. Sayers (and Hammett and Chandler) did include elements in their books closer to mainstream fiction than did many Golden Age mystery writers. These literary elements have real merit. But so do the more purely mystery elements often found in Sayers and Hammett, such as their plotting and use of detection. These have genuine artistic merit too. So does the best fiction of mystery writers as a whole. The time has more than come for people to recognize the brilliant plotting of Christie, Queen and Carr as an artistic accomplishment in its own right. Good plotting, logic, and imagination are artistic merits, in any branch of literature, mystery fiction included. This article on Sayers takes a different tack.

Instead of seeing merit only in those elements of Sayers that differ from other mystery story writers, it tries to take a broad point of view, analyzing Sayers' accomplishments along the whole continuum of her writing, from plotting to literary Background material. It stresses what Sayers had in common with other mystery writers, not just her differences. Sayers herself was of two minds on this issue. Her critical writings stressed her personal artistic goal: an attempt to turn the mystery story into a novel of depth, with real characters and subjects of substance in their backgrounds. But Sayers also emphasized her relationship to detective fiction as a whole: founding and being the guiding force behind the Detection Club, a professional association of British authors that stressed "pure" detection; and serving as a prominent reviewer, historian, and anthologist of detective fiction. Sayers was virtually the Pope of British Golden Age detective fiction. Her encouragement in print of new writers, such as John Dickson Carr, made their reputations, and their careers. Attempts by contemporary critics to divorce her from detective fiction do violence to her own beliefs. A Note on Anthologies These are often the best sources for short stories today, original magazines being expensive, and one author collections being out of print.

In terms of story quality, the best of Dorothy L. Sayers' three omnibuses is #2, from 1931. I am out of synch with Sayers' idea that mystery and horror stories are linked, and am disinterested in the horror stories she often included in her anthologies. The introduction to Sayers' first omnibus (1928) contains an in depth look at detective fiction. It is heavily weighted to the Realist School . Both the School's leaders, R. Austin Freeman and Freeman Wills Crofts are featured prominently. There is also a great deal about the Realist School's ancestor, scientific detection. Sayers' citing of L.T. Meade as the founder of scientific detection has been much quoted since, by Ellery Queen and others. Sayers was the first to identify Meade as the founder of scientific detection. Sayers collaborated with Meade's partner, Robert Eustace on The Documents in the Case (1930), and she is the sole source of the information that Meade was responsible for the writing and Eustace for the scientific ideas in Meade and Eustace's stories.

Sayers' highlighting of women writers like Meade, Isabel Ostrander, and Mrs. Henry Wood , often neglected by male critics of her era, reflects her feminism.

Question: Who wrote the detective novel 'The Nine Tailors' in 1934?
Answer: Dorothy L Sayers